By Brenda LaBlanc, National People's Action Co-Chair

You know you are doing something right when you attract enemies. They don't bother you until you become strong. It is only when you show strength that they are moved to fight back at you. The big hoo-haw that arose when we stood up to Karl Rove in DC is evidence of this. They would have ignored us if we hadn't made such a strong stand.

And here in Iowa, CCI is being attacked by the Farm Bureau. The Farm Bureau is a powerful organization that used to be made up of farmers until it was taken over by corporate farm interests. And they are trying to paint CCI as being "against farmers". But this attack stirs up controversy and dialog. In the end, more people then learn what we are doing who would not otherwise have known.

Yes, we have enemies. But we have allies too.

We have allies in the legal field where some are trying to find a way to defeat the legal idiotic notion that "a corporation is a person". We have allies in Congress and state governments who are wiling to use their influence with the Chase/Bank One fight and other CRA issues. And there are many other allies.

At our recent CCI State-wide convention in Des Moines, we had speakers from all kinds of organizations that are also working towards justice in all kinds of ways, against corporate power and the take-over of our of our system by big money.

People all over are beginning to recognize our country is in big trouble. A lot of people besides NPA are concerned and working on it. But we are the frontline. No-one, except NPA, is taking the "in your face" direct action that we take. That's our realm of expertise. We are not lawyers, we are not legislators. We are the neighborhood people who experience the results of the bad policies or no policies. And we go after the ones responsible with direct action. We do what Ghandi said we should do, we "make injustice visible".

We are making our voices heard. We have enemies. I say, "Bring'em on!" If they are ticked off at what we are doing, more power to us! We must be touching a nerve. On the other hand, we also have allies who can see what is happening to our country and are also working to turn this country around.

Let's keep engaging our allies and challenging our enemies. Don't give up! Don't give in!